The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced rapid growth. Technological advances in IC materials and design have produced generations of ICs where each generation has smaller and more complex circuits than the previous generation. However, these advances have increased the complexity of processing and manufacturing ICs and, for these advances to be realized, similar developments in IC processing and manufacturing are needed. In the course of integrated circuit evolution, functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per chip area) has generally increased while geometry size (i.e., the smallest component (or line) that can be created using a fabrication process) has decreased. This scaling down process generally provides benefits by increasing production efficiency and lowering associated costs. Such scaling-down also produces a relatively high power dissipation value, which may be addressed by using low power dissipation devices such as complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) devices.
The scaled down semiconductor ICs have been used in a variety of applications. In some applications, these ICs may include pixels for sensing radiation, such as photo or light. As these ICs continue to get scaled down, pixel sizes continue to shrink as well, which may lead to noise problems such as “cross-talk” (or signal interference) that may degrade the IC's photo performance. Traditional technologies may not be effective at reducing the cross-talk between pixels in an IC and may not achieve desired photo response characteristics.